Sunday, January 13, 2013

Idol, No More (A Teen Perspective)

I welcome Luke Carroll as guest blogger today. Luke is a grade 12 student,deeply concerned with human rights issues, basketball, and his next meal.

Canada once was a nation that I could look up to as a teenager, something like an idol to me, and maybe other nations. We made mistakes but the country was at least trying to follow its morals. Canada stayed away from wars like Iraq, We had great health care; we care for the poor. Now what do we have?

We pulled ourselves out of the Kyoto agreement saying that we would take care of environmental issues in our own ways. What has happened? Nothing. Just recently a Canadian mining company won a court case allowing them to set up a gold mine in a recovering El Salvador against the wishes of the Salvadoran people and their government. What is there to be proud of now?

Enter Idle No More. The new omnibus bills, passed without proper consultation with First Nations, have just crossed the line. Our treatment of aboriginals in this nation has been disgraceful at best in the past but now it is something completely different. We have forgotten that they were the first ones here and that they helped us develop. We can also never forget about the poor treatment they received from fellow Canadians. Forgotten treaties, residential schools, racism etc.

It has now come to a point where I wonder as a teenager what there is to be proud of, in this great nation of ours. Saying this does not make me anti-Canadian, it just means that I also believe that it is time for a change. Theresa Spence is on this hunger strike for the same reason. She wants a great nation. So do I.